San Francisco (AFP)

Instagram is perfecting its techniques to prevent online harassment and is expanding its US fact-checking program to the rest of the world, the application announced on Monday.

"From today, we are rolling out a feature that warns users when their legend could be considered offensive," said the Facebook platform, which is very popular with young people.

"It gives them a chance to think before posting," she continues.

Instagram had already added this artificial intelligence technology for comments under the content this summer, and the "results are promising," said the app.

For example, if someone writes "you're stupid", a window will appear to say "this legend looks like other legends that have been reported", and give him the choice between changing its wording, "learn more "or ignore.

Facebook is increasing efforts on all of its platforms to foster a less aggressive atmosphere and restore trust with users and the authorities.

In this logic, the social media giant has set up a program for checking dubious information ("fact-checking") on its main network, with the help of third parties, mainly press organizations.

Facebook's American partners have also been working on Instagram since May to examine and identify content that is subject to disinformation.

Questionable information is identified by artificial intelligence technologies, content moderation teams and user reports.

The network partner journalists are then responsible for verifying them.

When a content is evaluated as "false" or "partly false", "we reduce its visibility (...) and we add a label to it so that people decide for themselves what they want to read or share", explains the platform.

The labels will be automatically attached to identical content on Facebook and Instagram, the app says.

This fact-checking process does not, however, at this stage apply to statements by political figures, a subject which has been the subject of controversy in the United States for weeks, when Twitter has decided to ban all advertisements of a political nature. .

© 2019 AFP